Brice Marden, Eileen Costello, David Anfam - An Art Book Series Event

FREE - Berger Forum doors open at 5:30 p.m. 

Brice Marden, The Propitious Garden of Plane Image, Third Version; 2000-2006. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

From the monochromatic nuances of his early paintings to the vivid calligraphic loops and webs of his recent landscapes of China, the work of American artist Brice Marden (b.1938) has had a significant impact on contemporary art. Marden discusses his creative process and sources of inspiration with David Anfam, Commissioning Editor for Fine Art at Phaidon Press and one of the foremost scholars on abstract expressionism, and art historian Eileen Costello, author of Brice Marden (Phaidon, March 2013). 

Brice Marden is the first in Phaidon’s new series of well-illustrated, introductory books on important contemporary artists. Brice Marden is also the first comprehensive monograph on the artist. It includes a full discussion of his painting, drawing, and printmaking. Dr. Costello explores the origins, development, style, themes, meanings, and media of Marden’s complete body of work and provides invaluable insight into this artist, who has been hailed as the most profound abstract painter of the past four decades.

Brice Marden, Letter about Rocks, 2008-2009. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the event after the audience Q&A.

Brice Marden received his BFA from Boston University’s School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1961 and his MFA from Yale’s School of Art and Architecture in 1963. He first gained attention in the mid-1960s with his monochromatic canvases composed of oil paint mixed with beeswax and rich, complexly muted color. Since then Marden has never wavered from his commitment to make abstract yet frankly personal paintings, which incorporate multiple art historical and cultural references. His exhibitions are greatly anticipated; since the beginning of Marden’s career, his paintings, drawings, and prints have been regularly shown in museums and galleries around the globe. Marden is widely recognized as an artist of singular talent and formidable power. He is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery.

Brice Marden, Weaver Letter, 2010-2011. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

Eileen Costello received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010; her dissertation was on postwar collaboration between abstract expressionist painters and modernist architects. Dr. Costello has taught at Hunter College, City University of New York, and has lectured at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Menil Collection, Houston. She first began studying Marden's work a decade ago, initiating the catalogue raisonné of his drawings and paintings in 2003. At present, she is the Project Director for The Catalogue Raisonné of the Drawings of Jasper Johns, to be published by the Menil Collection in 2016.

Brice Marden, For Blinky, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.David Anfam is Commissioning Editor for Fine Art at Phaidon Press, London, and Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. Dr. Anfam received his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art (1984). His many publications include studies of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Jackson Pollock, Anish Kapoor and Brice Marden. Anfam also wrote the landmark Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A Catalogue Raisonné (Yale University Press, 1998), which received the prestigious 2000 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art. In 2007 he curated Bill Viola’s Ocean Without a Shore for the 52nd Venice Biennale.

In its fifth year the program series An Art Book, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a celebration of the essential importance and beauty of art books. The events showcase book presentations and discussions by world renowned artists, critics, curators, gallerists, historians and writers.

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